


Meta: On the Supernatural Finale and Why I Liked It

by lemmasyne



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Episode: s15e20 Carry On, Gen, Meta, Season/Series 15, Spoilers, sam and Dean centric
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-21
Updated: 2020-11-21
Packaged: 2021-03-09 18:33:42
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,115
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27650716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/lemmasyne/pseuds/lemmasyne
Summary: I’ve been craving meta on the finale.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 31





	Meta: On the Supernatural Finale and Why I Liked It

**Author's Note:**

> I don’t have Tumblr; hence my use of AO3 to ramble. If you wished to ramble too in a comment, I would ADORE reading it.

I didn’t know exactly what I wanted from the finale, but I didn’t expect a lot. My real attachment to the show comes from Seasons 1–5, and I have never fully trusted any of the other showrunners to tell Sam and Dean’s story.

But, as everyone knows, Seasons 1–5 can stand on their own, and the later seasons – especially Season 9 onwards – do touch on themes and questions that the early seasons don’t. There are questions about violence as well as very rich questions about autonomy (my favorite) – autonomy in both the narrow sense of “bodily autonomy” as well as in a broader sense: deciding the path of one’s life, deciding what compromises one is willing to make. (Of course Sam in particular is associated with these questions about autonomy.)

So the later seasons do have interesting stories to tell, even if I do think of some episodes as being _questionably_ canon. (It’s also saddened me to see the change in the show’s aesthetic, since I love Eric Kripke’s truck-stop America so much.)

Coming back to Season 15, then, I had mixed hopes for the finale. I loved the angst of 15.17 (“Unity”), although I didn’t love the retcon that was Sam’s speech at the end. (Although I can also believe he was choosing his words strategically rather than aiming at truth.) I loved the unrelenting darkness of 15.18. 15.19, however, I only liked because it felt like “The Last Outpost of All That Is” (and because of the dog); despite its huge scale, it was an episode with nothing interesting to say, either in a cosmic way or, really, about Sam and Dean. And the fact that God/Jack’s climactic speech was that when people need to be their best, they can be – I know I shouldn’t have expected more, but still! Still!

I really like Jack-is-God though!

An aside on 15.19:

Sam’s words to Dean at the end of 15.19 are an example of what I was _afraid_ was going to happen in the finale. Sam says, “You know, with Chuck not writing our story anymore, we get to write our own. You know, just you and me going wherever the story takes us.”

What annoys me about this scene is that while masquerading as some kind of conclusion, it’s _so_ unsatisfying. It’s unsatisfying because the boys were “free” (writing their own story) for ten seasons, so far as canon went then, but that didn’t go any way to solving the issues between them. I understand that the show had brought itself to a place where it _had_ to resolve the writer-as-God issue, but for a semi-finale it was shame how little the resolution bore on the arcs of Sam and Dean’s lives.

That they were now free said _nothing_ about what they would use their freedom for!

(Of course, sometimes the show works against itself, and complicates its own presentation of events. What is meant by the fact that the downbeat “Running in Empty” was the song chosen for that episode’s triumphal ending montage? I don’t know. Was it an acknowledgement that “freedom is a length of rope, God wants you to hang yourself with it”?)

Back to the finale.

I’m primarily invested in the show for the Sam and Dean’s relationship, no matter whether it’s queer-platonic or romantic (the two ways I prefer to construe it). The very late seasons have continued to confirm that Sam and Dean will choose each other over everyone else – which I love. And I have loved the angst-fest in these seasons that is Sam continuing to choose Dean even as their relationship continues to harm him. (A Dean-critical reading but one that I subscribe to.)

So what would the finale make of the boys’ relationship? Would it be retrospectively presented as, if not sweetness and light, at least a loving relationship and _therefore_ an acceptable relationship, from the show’s perspective, for both parties? (Cas tells Dean, “Everything you have ever done, the good and the bad, you have done for love”; from the show’s perspective, bad things are okay as long as you do them out of love.)

Would Sam and Dean’s relationship be retrospectively reinterpreted, à la 15.19, as being as simple as two brothers-in-arms fighting and winning against forces bigger than them?

No, because in the end the finale didn’t even attempt to summarize or interpret Sam and Dean’s relationship. It just took the relationship and made up an ending for it.

I think this was a good move from the showrunners: when you’re the show and _every episode_ is hard canon, the boys’ relationship doesn’t seem totally internally consistent on _any_ interpretation – so whichever one you choose will fall short.

But I also _liked_ this move. It didn’t pronounce on Sam and Dean’s relationship. Okay, it didn’t really resolve anything either – none of the relationship’s shortcomings were acknowledged, let alone addressed – but in fact, I find I’m glad the show didn’t focus on these shortcomings, just because I doubt that any kind of genuinely redemptive arc would have been possible for either of the boys or for their relationship at this stage.

The second reason I liked 15.20 is that I liked the episode's place within the overall architecture of the show. When Sam died at the end of Season 2, Dean wasn’t strong enough to let him go, but when Dean died in 15.20 (in an explicit mirror of Sam’s death back then, with the iron nail as the murder weapon), Sam _was_ strong enough to let _him_ go. (And not, in my reading of them, because he loved Dean less; I see Dean as having become as necessary to Sam by this season as Sam was to Dean back in Season 2.)

I see this as a heroic moment for Sam – as in, a narratively heroic moment. He does what Dean was never able to do. (And the fact that this is living a life of his own after Dean’s death: I cry.)

But finally, the real reason I liked the finale is that it fully played out the connection between the boys.

Their relationship has the potential to be the primary relationship in both their lives, for better or for worse for both of them, and I’m so glad we saw this happen. That Dean's role was as a _shadow_ in Sam's normal life (and that Sam lived out the rest of his life without seeing him again) is beautifully awful. Their ending may not, in the context of everything that's come before, be exactly good, but to semi-quote Kurt Vonnegut, I love it nonetheless, because it’s so human.


End file.
